Benefits of Region-wide Focused Clinical Information Systems

Eedo Lifshitz, Channel Sales Director, iMDsoft
Published: Oct 10, 2024

Regional Clinical Information Systems (CIS) are being implemented in critical care departments across the world, providing numerous advantages and resulting in significant cost reductions. This blog post reviews the challenges that regional healthcare authorities face, explores the benefits of regional CIS, and provides examples of their adoption in various regions with iMDsoft®’s MetaVision™.

Regional Deployment Challenges

• Managing diverse clinical workflows across the region
• Ensuring proper governance of access to patient data
• Achieving scalability to accommodate large-scale deployments
• Balancing digital transformation initiatives with IT budget constraints
• Leveraging investments in existing EPR systems for general wards

Advantages of Regional Clinical Information Systems

The implementation of regional Clinical Information Systems in critical care departments has numerous advantages. These systems provide superior healthcare services and result in significant cost reductions. Large regions in Europe and Australia have already adopted these systems, recognizing the unique benefits of a common, best-of-breed clinical information system.

These benefits include:

• Allows physicians and nurses to leverage the benefits of a specialized automated Clinical Information System (CIS) for critical care departments
• Enables sharing of patient medical records, including full ICU/OR data, for example, across all hospitals within UK integrated care systems (ICSs)
• Leverages regional expertise and experience in medical workflows across the region
• Saves time and money by avoiding duplicate tests when transferring patients between hospitals
• Offers a minimum learning curve when transferring medical staff across hospitals
• Provides visibility into hospital capacities across the region during pandemics
• Features a unified infrastructure, centralized IT, and clinical governance
• Offers shared deployment resources, training, and services across the region
• Streamlines regional deployment of third-party software
• Improves research results with a larger, centralized database

MetaVision’s Regional Deployment Advantages

• Achieves the desired balance between regional and hospital workflows, while ensuring proper data access governance
• Features a scalable and reliable architecture, successfully deployed across large statewide regions
• Offers flexibility with support for both distributed and centralized deployments
• Provides regional reporting and statistics for enhanced data analysis
• Reduces regional deployment costs through a unified IT architecture and streamlined clinical workflows
• Protects existing EPR investments with industry-standard Transition of Care interfaces, such as HL7 and FHIR

Regional Adoption of Clinical Information Systems

Norfolk and Waveney ICS, UK
Norfolk and Waveney ICS (Integrated Care System) recently selected MEDITECH Expanse as the new EPR (Electric Patient Record) software for the general wards across the hospitals in the region and decided to keep the iMDsoft MetaVision clinical information system across the critical care departments in the region.

Lower Austria Region, Austria
Lower Austria region has been using MetaVision for over a decade as the clinical information system for critical care departments while exploring EPR vendors such as CGM and Dedalus for the general wards. Understanding the benefits of a regional MetaVision deployment, Lower Austria is exploring cross-border healthcare services with the Czech Republic.

Jönköping county council, Sweden
The council sought a high-acuity clinical information system (CIS) to help standardize care across the region and that could embed care plans, regulatory requirements and best practices. System flexibility was essential to customize the CIS in accordance with the council’s needs. It was also important that the system could be modified easily after the initial implementation to accommodate changing requirements over time. MetaVision’s unique architecture enabled efficient deployment across all three sites in the county.

New South Wales State, Australia
Australia’s New South Wales state has deployed, side-by-side, the iMDsoft MetaVision clinical information system for critical departments across 25 hospitals, along with Oracle-Cerner Millenium EPR software for general wards, to achieve the regional deployment benefits for critical care.

Queensland Health, Australia
Queensland Health (QH) is responsible for the management administration and delivery of public sector health services across Queensland, Australia’s second-largest state by area, with a population of 4.5 million. Prior to choosing MetaVision, ICUs across Queensland operated using a range of standards, including several different information systems as well as paper records. QH recognized that variations across ICUs create significant barriers to providing the best patient care, compliance with health care initiatives, support of research advancement of professional interests and the encouragement of clinical best practices. The implementation of MetaVision has delivered significant benefits that are already having a positive impact on patient care and safety, clinical and operational costs and quality throughout QH.

Conclusion

iMDsoft’s MetaVision clinical information system has been specifically designed to meet the unique and complex requirements of large regional rollouts. This has been proven in successful deployments across multiple regions, including in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Austria, and Australia. The Transition of Care add-on to MetaVision, based on industry standards, allows hospitals to select their preferred EPR solution for general wards, according to their clinical requirements and budget constraints. At the same time, they can leverage the benefits of a unified MetaVision deployment across the region, in their most critical departments – ICU and Anesthesia. The implementation of regional Clinical Information Systems in critical care departments has numerous advantages, including improved patient outcomes, increased efficiency, and enhanced data sharing and collaboration among healthcare providers. Many regions around the world have already recognized these benefits and have adopted these systems to help them provide superior healthcare services and reduce costs.

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